A sick and snow day.

Although nothing like the storms of last winter we finally had a real snow storm.  Luckily, we did not have to endure the terrible rush hour on Wednesday evening.  Unfortunately for us, Little Stephen has been sick so we did not get to have any adventures in the snow this year.  Instead, we spent a lot of time reading books, playing, and going a little stir crazy!

Happy Baby and Daddy!

A little Chili.

Poor sick little guy.

Our front yard.

This was REALLY close to our house.

The backyard.

We hope everyone had a wonderful and safe snow day.  As for me, I am looking forward to some warmer weather!

A little attempted escape....

So last night, Stephen and I, woke up in the middle of the night to a loud banging sound.  We of course were alarmed and Stephen got out the baseball bat and began our usual routine when we wake up concerned we may have an intruder (this happens WAY too much at our house by the way).  Anyway, we realized after Steve searched the basement that it was George.  He had managed to turn himself side ways in his crib and was banging his legs on the side of the crib trying to break free from the swaddle.  His crib is against the wall that backs up to our bed.  It was comical to see how hard he was working to free himself.  So the time has come for us to stop swaddling the little guy.  It's hard to believe that he is already so big already, no swaddle, and working on rolling over.  How is time going even more quickly than it did with Stephen?!

Maybe I am a little crazy...

Ok, so I have not blogged about this yet, but over the holiday I decided to switch Georgie to cloth diapers.  I did this a bit selfishly, honestly because George was having major blowouts and I decided that with the amount of laundry I was doing I might as well give cloth diapers a try.  That and I was shocked by the quantity of dirty diapers leaving our home.  While I would not consider myself as environmentally conscious as others, I began to feel that I did not want my children's lives to begin by creating large quantities of trash that would be around for hundreds and hundreds of year.  Plus, I started to get a bit grossed out by the things they put in disposable diapers.  I honestly don't think that all those chemicals can be good for our kiddos.

So far things have been going well until a few days ago.  I started to notice a horrible fishy stench coming from the diapers.  I washed them several times, but the smell only got worst.  Finally, I called the store where a purchased the diapers only to find out that apparently you can not use Desitin with cloth diapers because the ointment does not wash off of the diapers and bacteria and such then grow.  Gross and the fish stench that I smelled was from the ointment itself because there is a lot of fish oil in it!!!  The remedy they said was to boil the diapers.  So yesterday, I spent hours literally boiling stinky diapers (they were clean before I boiled them).  I had two huge stock pots going and some thirty diapers boiling.  The worst part, despite the time spent, was the fish stench spread across the whole house and all our windows fogged up.  As if having two kids was not enough work!

Aside from the boiling, I have to say that the diapers are awesome.  I learned an important lesson and that is that I really need to do more research before I jump into things.  For instance, if I had read more, I would have learned that I could not use Desitin while using cloth diapers.  There is a lot of good information out there about cloth diapers that would have better informed me.  I really encourage people to give cloth diapers a try (although this blog post might discourage you)!  Ask if you have any questions!!!

Welcome to the world special baby!

Last Tuesday (1/18/2011) the Schatz family welcomed Grady Joseph to the world.  Grady made it into the world a bit earlier than expected after his Mom had been waiting in the hospital for over a week.  He, like his two first cousins, were blessed with Schatz genes (the Schatz family are tall, tall people) and weighed five pounds four ounces and was nineteen inches long despite being two months early!  We have been waiting in anticipation to welcome into the world the first Schatz cousin and are so excited that he will be so close in age with our kiddos.  We suspect he has a bit of his Mom's competitive edge and was ready to make his appearance into the world and did not want his cousin (Georgie) to be that much older.  Here are some pictures of our new family member.

Grady is still in the hospital, but doing great and should be home with his parents in a few weeks.  We have not gotten to meet little Grady yet and can't wait to see him and his parents.  Although we are farther than we wish, know we are sending you lots of love, Michael and Britt, and can't wait to meet Grady.  We love you little guy!

A visit from Grandma and Grandpa

Over the weekend we had special visitors, Grandma and Grandpa!  They came from New York for the weekend to see us and their little guys.  We had a blast with them and the boys loved the special attention.  It was a busy weekend filled with football watching, Mass, and homemade pizza all the way from New York.  Here are a few pictures from there trip.  I wish I had gotten more!

We can't wait until they visit again.  Next time I will get more pictures!

Fun with balloons!

I could not resist posting this of Stephen and his fun with balloons!  Watch until the end when he has them both going.  He is such a cute little guy.  Obviously I am very biased!

A vacation day?

On Friday night Stephen, the boys, and I went out to dinner.  We were talking about my career as a social worker and joking about how it was seriously on the back burner.  As we talked, I realized that my real career was as a Mom/homemaker.  I don't know why its taken me two years to realize this, but having been so focused on my career prior to kids and having LOVED the job I left to be a Mom, sometimes it is easy to lose sight of or minimize the importance of my role as Stephen and George's Mom.  I realized as we talked that in the close to two years that I had worked in the home (and part time out of the home) I had not had a real day off.  So I joked with Steve that I wanted a vacation day.  My husband, who really is wonderful (I know it annoys me at times too), agreed and said it was time for me to take a day off and leave the boys.  Shortly afterward, he said that if I got a day off then he got to do my year end review!  Only if I get to write comments.

That got me to thinking about what I would do on my day off.  Go to the movies alone?  Lay in bed?  Read the newspaper in bed?  Hmm, oh the possibilities.  As a Mom the things I miss most are having things that are my own, mostly my time.  Now my biggest priority is my kids' needs.  Having such little guys we are either on the go, or at home sleeping (with me cleaning, doing the laundry, preparing dinner), but of course the two rarely seem to be on the same sleep schedule during the day.  So most of all I would just like to have time that's my own without strollers, groceries, dinner, meals, etc.  The sad truth is I probably wont take a day unless my husband makes me and even if I did I would probably spend it missing my three boys!

Any suggestions on how I can spend my day alone?  Have any of you had a day off?  How have you spent your day?

A weekend of football

We got to spend the weekend with some of our favorite people watching football.  As most of you know, we are Ravens fans.  Steve never had a team growing up and our first year dating the Ravens were terrible so we were given a lot of tickets to games.  We ended up going to about seven games that year and Steve slowly became a Ravens fan.  It also helped that one of the first times Steve met my family, my step dad told him that if he became a Colts fan he would not be welcome in his home. 

Ironically, we spent most of the weekend with Colts fan.  But have no fear all my fellow Baltimore fans, little Stephen wore his Ravens shirt.  Lots of our oldest friends are Colts fans.  For years we have played on a summer Congressional softball team, the Hoosier Daddies, which Steve helped start when he worked for a Congressman from Indiana.  We are able to put aside our differences in professional sports teams for the most part!  However, we have decided that we wouldn't watch playoff games together when the Colts and Ravens play one another!!!

Here are some pictures from our fun night.  Thanks to our friends, Sara and Ben, for having us and to our friends for letting us crash with two little people in tow.

Georgie in his gear.  Stephen wore this same outfit last fall!

Anne, Colleen, and Sean.  Congrats to Colleen and Sean, who just got engaged!

Teresita and Nick

Stephen in his gear playing with DVD's

Hanging out with friends

Me and my little fan :)

Brotherly love!

My fear about starting a blog is coming true-I am running out of interesting things to say.  The holidays and fun are over and now we are left with the cold (very cold) weather and short days.  So here is a little of the of the most interesting things going on with us!

Over the last few weeks as George has become more intereactive, Stephen has been taking more interest in him.  He often shows George his toys and tries to hand him things, which usually just results in him leaving the toy sitting on George.  This morning after getting up Stephen went to find George and the two immediatly began to smile at one another!

One of the funnier things that has started to happen is that Stephen steals, tries to help, and sometimes shares his pacifier with George.  He often begins to yell "uh oh" everytime he loses it.  This happened the other day in the car when Stephen started yelling "uh oh" with a very serious look on his face.  Here is a video which sums up our life with two under two.  Stephen gets a little too exicted toward the end and tries to hug George.  Poor little guy got hit on the head but was fine after his initial upset.

Some other cute photos from the week:

Big boy eating at the table

Stephen stealing the pacifier

So cute!!!

Happy New Year!

We started our New Year with friends, both old and new, with a wonderful dinner and games.  We were lucky to have a wonderful sitter, Ms. Bunny Brooks, to watch the boys so Stephen and I got to enjoy a night out with adults.  Thank you Tierney and Emily for the wonderful party.

Stephen and I



Lovely hostesses

Baltimore friends

This year we have a lot to be thankful for, especially our newest addition George Calvert Schatz.  Although Georgie is only three months old, it is hard to believe he has not been with us forever.  He has been the easiest newborn.  At times, I have to remind myself he is such a little guy especially because he is so big (he is almost 16 pounds already) and does many non-newborn things, most notably, sleeping through the night.  I try not to talk about his sleep habits because I almost feel like I am bragging.  Plus, there is a part of me that thinks it is almost too good to be true and if I talk about it then before we know it his wonderful sleeping habits will be gone and I will be up 2-3 times a night like most other Moms.  But all joking aside, he has been a wonderful addition to our family and has made everything a little more fun for us.  I can't wait until he's moving around, crawling, and can keep up with Stephen!

Georgie (I dont know how to flip it :)

Happy Baby and Daddy

Georgie

I asked Stephen what he hoped for 2011 and he said he hoped it would be calm.  This got me to thinking that since we got married in 2008, our life has been, well, one big adventure after another.  Two babies and our first home.  It has been a wonderful (nearly) three years for our growing family.  So for me, I hope that 2011 brings as many wonderful blessings to our family and that life stays as exciting, but also gives us time to catch up with all that we have.  Happy New Year to all we love--I hope this year brings prosperity and much happiness to all of you!